I've been set the task by my friend to build a computer which I'd class as midrange. The only thing he really cares about is that it must "feel" quick (although he won't be doing anything massively computational). So SSD boot drive and a fair chunk of RAM?

My budget is £500 (plus £50 for P&P). Monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers and OS are not necessary - so all the money is for a barebones tower really.

Currently, I'm thinking of an i5, mATX board, 2TB HDD, 128-256GB SSD. He's requested 32GBs of RAM, so although I think it's overkill I have to allow for it. If there's enough left over, I'll buy a midrange graphics card - but from what he's told me it will be used for it may not be required at all. I'm guessing a reputable 500W PSU would be fine for this build.

That's quite overkill for something to "feel" quick if he's just going to surf the web. Unless he's doing video work, you could get away with an i3. The SSD and a fast spinning disk drive will make all the difference in feel.

It'll be a bit more than surfing the web, but no (or hardly any) video processing. Probably a few posters in Photoshop, and games such as Football Manager.

It's also got to last a few years, so that's why I'm trying to go for an i5 over i3.

Assuming their computing habits aren't going to change drastically, an i3 will last as long as an i5. General computing isn't going to require 4 cores any time soon, and most software is regressing on CPU requirements to be compatible with more devices.

If the price is close, I'd rather an i3 and graphics card than an i5 alone.